The National Forensic Service is conducting a DNA test on a dead body, who is believed to be runaway sunken ferry owner Yoo Byung-eun, police said Tuesday.

According to investigators, the body was found on June 12 at a plum field in Suncheon, South Jeolla Province, which had been picked as a feasible location where the capsized ferry Sewol owner could hide himself out after the April 16 sinking tragedy.

The body's DNA approximately matched that of the 73-year-old Yoo’s older brother, Byung-il, said the investigators. The older Yoo has been taken into custody for allegedly pocketing funds of affiliates of Chonghaejin Marine Co., the operator of the ill-fated ferry.

The owner of the plum farm notified a police station of the body in early June. But the body was found to have been left in the field for more than a month as police, then, allegedly failed to verify the identification due to heavy decay.

Over the past few weeks, investigators composed of prosecutors and policemen have carried out an all-out manhunt for the fugitive in areas in the southern part of the nation.

The prosecution said in May that it obtained intelligence that Yoo was staying at the residence of a devotee of the Salvation Sect -- which was led by the Sewol owner -- in Suncheon. But the law enforcement agency has failed to arrest him.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Salvation Sect reportedly downplayed the authenticity as to whether the body is really Yoo. He was quoted by a news provider as saying that the corpse appears not to be Yoo “in consideration of a variety of factors (involving the estimated death time of the unidentified figure).”

While police said that some liquor bottles were also discovered around the dead body, the religious sect’s spokesman reportedly argued that Yoo is teetotal like his earlier remarks in front of devotees.

The National Police Agency said it is set to unveil its interim investigation results involving the state forensic agency’s ongoing DNA scrutiny at Suncheon Police Station at 9 a.m., Tuesday.

Some netizens are denouncing the prosecution for not securing the body immediately after it was found by a farmer in early June. The prosecution, which saw the initial warrant expire, again asked the Incheon District Court to issue the arrest warrant for Yoo on Monday, vowing to capture him in the coming months.

The body's DNA matched that of a DNA sample that authorities obtained from a vacation home where Yoo was holed up, 2.5 kilometers from where the body was found. A comparison also showed that the body's DNA and that of Yoo's arrested older brother, Yoo Byung-il, 75, have a brotherly relationship, officials said.

"We carried out a DNA test after finding a dead body in Suncheon, and the results fairly matched that of Yoo's brother," a police official said. "We need to look more closely into this, but the body is believed to be Yoo's."

At the time of the finding, the body was lying face up, wearing a winter jumper and a hat, and it was seriously decomposed, officials said. The exact timing of death is unclear, they said.

A senior prosecution official said final results are due from the National Forensic Service.

Yoo has been on the run since the ferry Sewol sank on April 16 and claimed more than 300 lives.

Woo Hyung-ho, police chief in Suncheon, told a news conference in the small southern city that a book written by Yoo was found at the site as well as an empty bottle of a shark liver oil product made by a Yoo family company.

Several empty bottles of alcoholic beverage and an empty bottle of shark liver oil product made by one of affiliates owned by the reclusive owner were found at the scene, officials said....

Some officers within the investigative agency, however, raised the possibility that the body could not be that of Yoo, citing various forensic and circumstantial evidence. "I am 110 percent certain that the decomposed body is not that of Yoo, after decades of experience in the field," said a police officer, asking not to be named.

It is impossible for the body, which was too decomposed to provide any hint on the cause of death, to be Yoo's, who was last seen on May 25 in the Suncheon area, the officer added.

The state forensic laboratory will likely release the results of a toxicology test on the ferry Sewol owner and the cause of his death later this week, police said Wednesday.

The National Forensic Service is conducting the toxicology test to determine the exact cause of the death of Yoo Byung-eun, whose body was recovered last month, they said.

The service may announce the outcome later Thursday at the earliest or Friday morning at the latest, police said.

Police said Tuesday that a body discovered on June 12 in a plum field in the southern city of Suncheon, about 415 kilometers south of Seoul, was that of Yoo, a 73-year-old billionaire who owned ferry operator Chonghaejin Marine Co.

The forensic service reportedly conducted a postmortem on the body but failed to determine the exact cause of Yoo's death because it was badly decomposed.

Yoo was hiding inside a small closet when police and prosecutors stormed the house on May. 25, according to prosecutors of Incheon District Prosecutors' Office probing the case.

"We hurriedly evacuated Yoo to the closet made out of logs on the second floor after we heard investigators trying to get inside the vacation home," a 33-year-old close aide to Yoo was quoted by the prosecution as saying.

Two bags filled with 830 million won (US$810,500) and US$160,000, respectively, were also found inside the closet, prosecutors said.

"It is deplorable that the prosecution could not find (Yoo at the time of the raid)," said an investigator close to the investigation. ...

Meanwhile, the National Police Agency dismissed the chief of the provincial police agency in South Jeolla, which governs the Suncheon police office, over the botched manhunt.

The national agency launched an inspection of police officers involved in the search operation a day earlier after discovering that the retrieved body of Yoo was left unidentified for some six weeks.

"The latest dismissal indicates the seriousness of the issue," a National Police Agency official said on condition of anonymity.

Police raided the cabin, called "Memory in Wood", on May 25 but failed to find the multi-millionaire, who had hidden behind a wooden wall.

When they returned last month, acting on testimony given by an assistant, police found two suitcases that between them contained 830 million won ($810,800) and $160,000, tagged with numbers 4 and 5, prosecutors said, suggesting more cash may have been stashed elsewhere.

It was not clear how, or when, the health-obsessed Yoo traveled the two kilometers to where his body was found nearly three weeks later between orchard saplings, clad in an expensive winter coat and beside a bag containing the alcohol bottles, a change of clothes and a pack of plums. ...

I'm not sure Yoo was heath obsessed. Spending 4 years taking over 2,000 photos a day out the same window doesn't strike me as the behavior of a health-obsessed person, nor a sane person for that matter. Rather, I think this so-called "health obsession' is just another part of the fiction. Of course the 2.7 million photos is a fiction as well, who knows? It is odd that his followers claim he was heath obsessed AND that he hardly left his room during those 4 years.

The members also said committing suicide is disobeying the rules of the religion, which bans it.

And that's a great example of how moronic and well .. batshit crazy Yoo's cult is. Most suicides are the result of mental illness. They might as well ban members from dying of cancer. http://www.suicide.org/suicide-causes.html

A senior prosecutor in charge of investigating April's ferry sinking offered to resign Thursday, holding himself accountable for failing to catch the fugitive shipping tycoon allegedly responsible for one of the country's worst peacetime disasters.

Choi Jae-kyung, 51, chief of the Incheon District Prosecutors' Office probing the case, offered his resignation to the top prosecution office, prosecutors said.

The move comes after the badly decomposed body of Yoo Byung-eun, a 73-year-old billionaire who owned Sewol operator Chonghaejin Marine Co., was found in remote mountains in southern part of the country last month.

The prosecution has come under fire for failing to locate Yoo's whereabouts for nearly two months and the delay in identifying the body, even after expending massive financial and personnel resources in the investigation.

On Wednesday, the prosecution office also acknowledged that Yoo was hiding inside a small closet of his vacation home when police and prosecutors stormed the house on May 25, The vacation home is located only about 2.5 kilometers away from where Yoo's body was found.

Choi, a veteran prosecutor with nearly 30 years of experience in the law enforcement agency, took the helm of the Incheon office in December 2013.

“I have never seen this kind of mystery in my life,” Woo Yoon-keun, an NPAD leader said during the march. “Before investigating the cause of the ferry disaster, we should first resolve the suspicions surrounding the discovery of Yoo’s body.” ...

Another NPAD leader, Park Beom-kye, pointed out that just hours before police were notified of the result of a DNA test on Yoo’s body Monday night, they requested a local court to reissue an arrest warrant for Yoo.

On the same day, Justice Minister Hwang Kyo-an vowed to “make full-scale efforts” to arrest Yoo, which Park said showed the incompetence of the government.

“It is a collapse of the nation’s entire system,” Park said in a radio interview. “On the day when police received the DNA test report, the Justice Minister said at an assembly hearing that he will do his best to arrest Yoo.”

Kim Moo-sung, chairman of the ruling Saenuri Party, criticized police, saying it is hard to understand how they failed to recognize the dead man was Yoo for so long.

Police did not even report that the corpse had been found to the prosecution.

"Someone has to take responsibility for this," Kim said.

"They repeatedly failed to clear suspicions about the case," Park Beom-kye, a spokesman of the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD), said. "The minister of justice, and the heads of the SPO and the NPA should be held accountable for it."

After sacking Woo Hyung-ho, head of the Suncheon Police Station, the NPA sent inspectors there to "thoroughly" examine how the officers handled the dead body. ...

2.7 million photographs in 4 years amounts to one every 50 seconds assuming he didn't sleep. One every 30 seconds assuming he did sleep and do other things like go to the bathroom every now and then. I'm skeptical. One article stated he had 30 cameras on hand to choose from, and followers are adamant he took every single photo without any automation. Those claims are just utterly ludicrous.

And while he did not make any public claims regarding his messiahship, former members have stated he was worshipped like a God. I imagine he realized making such claims public might not have helped him. Not all cult leaders are as bold as Moon, and the AHAE brand might have been harder to establish had his links to his cult and probably messiah claims been more well known. There are lots of opposing insider/outsider ideas and doctrines in these kinds of cults. Often what is said publicly is the opposite of what is said behind closed doors.